REPORT: More Than A Quarter Of The World Was Complicit In The CIA's Extraordinary Rendition And Torture Program

A new report from the George
Soros-controlled Open
Societies Foundationsdetails the enormous lengths the United
States went to preserve a program of "secret detention and extraordinary
rendition" of terror suspects begun during the George W. Bush
administration.

The report, called "Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and
Extraordinary Rendition," outlines more than 50 countries that
participated in the program. It describes in excruciating detail
what was done to 136 named victims of the program when they were
seized and flown to be interrogated by foreign governments or to
CIA prisons known as "black sites" where the agency interrogated
detainees with "enhanced interrogation techniques" that have been
labeled as torture.

Section V of the report gives a never-before-seen look into
the scope of worldwide participation in the program. It details
54 foreign governments that participated in some way in the
secret detention and extraordinary rendition program. That
included hosting CIA prisons, aiding in transportation and
logistics, provided enhanced interrogators,
or detaining, torturing or interrogating inmates.

Described as "affirmative acts of assistance," the report is a
condemnation of the widespread clandestine support for a program
that was
internationally condemned in public.

President Barack Obama was among those who condemned the program,
signing an executive order upon taking office that was supposed
to close the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba within a year. More
than four years later, it remains open. Obama has also not ended the practice of extraordinary
rendition, according to a January report in The Washington
Post.

According to the OSF report, the countries
listed as materially aiding and abetting the U.S.
extraordinary rendition program include the prominent allies of
Canada, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and the United
Kingdom.

As a result of their involvement,
the report concludes, multiple nations and high ranking
officials are being tried for human rights abuses in
international criminal court:

The European Court of Human Rights recently held that Macedonia’s
participation in Khaled El-Masri’s abduction, torture, and secret
detention violated the European Convention on Human Rights, and
that his treatment by the CIA amounted to torture. Italy’s Court
of Cassation upheld the convictions of U.S. and Italian officials
for their role in the extraordinary rendition of Abu Omar to
Egypt.